Friday, February 28, 2014

Tories playing the man not the ball is likely to backfire

In a blog on the Conservative Home website today Tory cheerleader Mark Wallace writes about "the horrors that a Miliband government would bring. ". And what "horrors" are they? Could they be any worse than those brought to us by this incompetent, uncaring, foolish Tory-led administration? I very much doubt it. The reason Cameron has failed so abysmally is not because he has been held back by the LibDems. They have largely been compliant. No. The reason is that they have a warped ideology and frankly don't know what they are doing. The venal combination of trying to do the wrong things and doing them badly. The badger cull is emblemic of this. Wrong thing to do, based on selectively chosen science while ignoring real experts and utterly bungled in execution.

Ed Miliband has gently taken command of a once divided Labour Party and united it. The Blairite/Brownite divisions are a thing of the past. He has also significantly modernised the Party and removed the last remaining blocks on its credibility as a potential Government. Meanwhile the Conservatives still tear themselves apart over Europe (especially) the economy etcetera. Etcetera. Divided parties don't win elections.

Ed is a social democrat, or a democratic socialist if you like. But he is no ideologue and the "Red Ed" charge is as preposterous as it always was. Ed articulates well the benefits of a mixed economy and he has a good team behind him. He is also, self-evidently, a decent man. His slight geekishness and occasional social discomfort is unlikely to be a block to his election once the public get to know him. The more they get to know Ed the more attractive the prospect of him in Downing Street will seem. The Conservatives think that they can win by playing the man not the ball. It could backfire on them.

1 Comments:

I posted this blog originally on the "Conservative Home" website referenced in it. I thought readers might like to see one of the responses below, unedited by me. The response is nonsense of course but it is instructive of what those of us who try and reamain rational online sometimes have to deal with!

QUOTE: That is the biggest problem for the tories. It is not UKIP, it is unthinking people uncritically voting for the paedophile panderers of the labour party. I really cannot fathom the argument that posits that if Miliband wins, it is because people voted UKIP. No, it is because lots of idiots vote labour and the tories are not doing anything to counter that and offer any form of significant alternative to labour. The tories and labour both support the same basic agenda, but want to implement it slightly differently. THAT is the problem. By being a slightly more competent and business friendly version of the labour party, you lose far more votes than you gain, because labour voters are not going to switch. They are tribal, unthinking reactionary idiots. They defend the paedophile panderers and in spite of the NCCL scandal being covered extensively in the left wing press (the Guardian and the Mirror and Newsnight) and in spite of every word printed being 100% accurate and true and in spite of no senior tory even mentioning it at all, they still believe it to be a "tory smear" and will keep voting for the war- criminal, economically incompetent, terrorist appeasing paedophile panderers of labour.UNQUOTE